


Of all the delis in all of Manhattan

by irisdouglasiana



Series: Le carnaval des animaux [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Season/Series 01, a special kind of awkward, a wonderful team!, does this count as a coffeeshop au?, inaccurate portrayal of the mafia, shameless misquoting of casablanca, unrequited crush but requited in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7032499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...she walks into mine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of all the delis in all of Manhattan

**Author's Note:**

> Daniel's dad/backstory here is based on two earlier stories, Better than anything he ever dreamed of/A beautiful thing to behold.

Chief Dooley sends Daniel home after working twenty-two hours straight. Calls him into his office (and doesn’t call him out in front of all his coworkers, thank god) and tells him, “Agent, you look like a goddamn mess and I don’t need you collapsing from exhaustion on me. Besides, we can’t afford to pay you this much overtime. Get some rest and report back tomorrow at 0800.”

“Yes, Chief.” Dooley’s right, Daniel realizes, as he heads back to his desk to gather his belongings and put on his coat. He’s swaying a little on his feet and he hopes nobody notices. He doesn’t allow himself to dwell too much on whether Dooley would make any of the other agents go home for looking tired or pulling long shifts.

“You’re leaving?” Carter asks from behind him, dashing his hopes for a clean exit.

“Stepping out for a little bit,” he says. He’s not about to tell her that he’s being sent home like a kid. She’s been at the New York SSR office for just under a month now—long enough to become friendly, but not quite long enough for him to know what to make of her.

He knows what to make of Jack Thompson, though. “Jumping ship, Sousa?” Thompson asks as he heads into Dooley’s office. “Damn. And I had some filing I needed to get done. Guess I’ll have to pass it along to Carter.”

After Thompson closes the door, Daniel hears her mutter, “I’ll tell you where you can stick your files instead.” As tired as he is, he can’t quite manage to stifle a laugh.

* * *

Daniel finds himself nodding off on the subway and nearly misses his stop at the Lower East Side. The dull throbbing in his leg as he slowly makes his way up the stairs to the street reminds him that he’s had his prosthesis on for far too long. He does his best to walk normally (well, for him) when he opens the door to the deli. “Hey, Pop.”

His father is wiping down the tables in preparation for the lunchtime crowd. He straightens when he sees his son. “You didn’t come home last night.”

“It’s an important case,” Daniel says as he heads over to the stairs leading up to their apartment. He can sense his father’s eyes on his back.

There’s a long pause. “You should rest,” his father finally says as he turns back to his work, resolutely not watching as his son grips the railing and hauls himself up the steps. He doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t have to. (It’s one of the few arguments Daniel can remember his parents having: his mother shouting, “Just say what you _really_ mean, for once in your life.” Daniel’s got a bit of both of them in him.)

Exhaustion truly hits him once he’s back in his room. He undresses and takes off his leg, lies down, and immediately drifts off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

It’s nearly dark when Daniel wakes up. He lies in bed for a few minutes before forcing himself to move. Showering and shaving help him feel slightly more human again, and then he realizes he’s starving. The pantry is pitifully empty: despite owning a deli, Daniel’s father has never been good at grocery shopping for the two of them, and Daniel doesn’t have the time or inclination. So he puts his leg back on with a grimace and heads downstairs. He ought to be helping his father out more, anyway—the neighborhood teenagers his father hired to replace him haven’t proven reliable.

His father pats his shoulder as Daniel rolls up his sleeves and puts on an apron. “Hungry?” he asks, handing him a roast beef sandwich. “I thought you might sleep all the way through dinner.”

Daniel wolfs the sandwich down gratefully. “Thanks, Pop. Slow day?”

“Yep. Well, Mrs. Marino did come in a couple hours ago with her daughter, Amelia. You remember Amelia, right? She’s a few years younger than you; just finished college.”

Daniel hurries to cut him off. “I remember. Pop, why don’t you take a break? I can take care of things down here.”

Daniel’s father raises his eyebrows. “Sure, sure,” he says, untying his apron. “Let me get you a stool. I’ll be in the back if you need anything.”

It feels odd to take his father’s place behind the counter. Daniel hasn’t done it in months, not since he started at the SSR. The deli in Little Italy was his parents’ dream and all of Daniel’s childhood memories are there, but things have been different since he came home. Some mornings he still feels like a stranger, waking up in a bed that isn’t his own, in a body that doesn’t belong to him.

Daniel’s so lost in his thoughts that it takes him a second to recognize Carter walking past the window. He nearly knocks over the stool as he lurches to his feet and tries to unsuccessfully duck down behind the counter. _Keep walking…keep walking_ …

No luck. She opens the door and stops dead in her tracks when she sees him half-kneeling, half-crouching on the ground. “Uh,” Daniel says with a weak smile, “I dropped something.” He pushes himself up with his crutch, suddenly painfully aware of the chipped paint on the walls, the ancient countertops, the dingy lighting.

Carter’s clearly as embarrassed as he is, but she can hardly back out now. After a moment of hesitation, she comes over and takes a seat at the counter. “This city must be smaller than I thought.”

“You have no idea.” Daniel can hear his father shuffling around in the back. He can obviously hear them talking up front, but Daniel knows the building would burn down before his father would interfere. “Um. Can I get you something to drink?”

It’s a bit strange for him to be serving her coffee for once. She takes it with cream, no sugar, and he files that away in his memory. “Thank you, Daniel,” she says. It’s the first time she’s called him by his first name, and it startles him to hear her say it. Of course, it’s not like she would call him _agent_ in public, so…

“You’re welcome. Peggy.” He tries out her name and likes it.

She looks at him expectantly and he realizes he never gave her the menu. “Oh! Sorry about that,” he says, handing it to her. “The ham sandwich is pretty good. Or the salami.”

Carter— _Peggy_ —decides on the ham sandwich. As he prepares the sandwich, he feels the need to fill the silence between them. “My parents bought this place back in ’23. The menu hasn’t changed since then.”

“It’s not a bad thing to be consistent.”

Daniel watches out of the corner of his eye as she takes a sip of her coffee. The speculation had been rampant back when they learned that Peggy Carter would be joining the New York SSR office. By his coworkers’ accounts, she should have been either a towering Amazon or a simpering whore—more of the latter than the former. And then he actually met her and she didn’t seem to be either of those things. He just had the feeling he was going to like her.

Peggy meets his gaze as he passes her his plate, and he realizes he’s being assessed too. “So the telephone company is just your day job, then?”

“You guessed it. I’m actually leading a double life.” (He doesn’t realize the irony of this until much later, when she’s staring him down from across the table in the interrogation room.)

Peggy’s obviously hungry, and he can’t help but be amused by how messy an eater she is. There’s nothing dainty or ladylike about the way she chews with her mouth wide open. Once she’s finished, she wipes her mouth and casts a look around the restaurant, taking in the Dodgers paraphernalia covering the walls and most of the available surfaces. “Has the décor changed since 1923?”

He looks down with a smile. “We’ve added a few things over the years.”

“It’s the Brooklyn…Dodgers, right? Was that Babe Ruth’s team?”

“No, no,” he corrects her. “Babe Ruth was with the Yankees. We don’t allow Yankees fans in here.”

Peggy snorts. “You’re all Yanks to me.”

The door opens and two men walk in. Daniel straightens up, frowning. _I thought he was still in prison._

“Hey, long time no see, Daniel,” Mickey Polizzi says with a grin, stepping forward to shake his hand. “Heard you’re a big war hero now.”

His brother Carlo nods at Peggy and gives her the once-over, and Daniel’s blood pressure skyrockets. “Hello, Miss.”

Peggy returns the briefest of nods. Her right hand drops casually to her side, and Daniel doesn’t doubt that she’s packing. He’s got a gun under the counter too, just in case.

“Mickey, Carlo. What can I do for you?”

“Your old man around?” Mickey asks, attempting to peer into the kitchen.

Daniel has a pretty good idea of what this is about. After a long moment, he takes a step back into the kitchen, where his father is drying dishes. “Pop,” he says. “It’s Mickey and Carlo Polizzi.”

His father wipes his hands, refusing to look Daniel in the eye. “Send them back here.”

Quietly, Daniel says, “You sure?”

“Send them back here,” he repeats in a tone that doesn’t invite disagreement.

Up front, Daniel tilts his head at Mickey and Carlo and they slip past him into the kitchen. He meets Peggy’s eyes and then looks away, straining to hear the conversation taking place in the back.

It’s not long before the brothers leave. Mickey claps Daniel on the shoulder as they head out. “We’ll have to catch up sometime. Tell me all about Europe, all right?”

“Sure thing,” Daniel says, though there’s nothing he’d like less than that.

Peggy is on her feet the instant the door closes. “I can follow them,” she says.

“No!” He’s horrified at the thought of sending a woman—agent or no—out after two undoubtedly armed men.

She raises an eyebrow at his reaction before settling back onto her stool. “It’s not worth blowing your cover for,” he adds lamely.

For a moment, Daniel thinks she might argue, but instead she reaches into her purse and pays him. “Thank you for the excellent food and company, Daniel,” Peggy says as she puts on her coat. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

* * *

Daniel waits until they’ve closed up for the night before he says anything to his father. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

His father is humming something to himself as he looks over the newspaper. He doesn’t answer.

“Pop.”

His father sighs and puts down the paper. “What was I supposed to tell you?” Daniel supposes it’s his way of saying, _you came back to me after two years of war without your leg and you had enough to deal with_.

“How long has this been going on for?”

“Maybe five months. After Mickey got out of prison.”

So not too long after Daniel came home from the hospital—not that he’d been in any state to do anything about it back then. Still, some lousy agent he is, taking five months to realize his own father was being extorted. Some lousy _son_ he is.

“How much, Pop?”

His father looks down. “It doesn’t matter. I count it as another business expense. And if it weren’t the Polizzis, it would be somebody else.”

“This isn’t Sicily, Pop.” Daniel has one more question. “They hurt you in any way? Threaten you?”

His father shakes his head a little too quickly. “No, no. These boys are all talk.”

When Daniel doesn’t respond, his father reaches out and grabs his shoulder, sounding as close as he ever gets to being angry. “Your old man can take care of himself, okay? You go back to work tomorrow and focus on your job. Don’t do anything stupid.”

It’s futile, of course. He’s never been able to stop Daniel from doing stupid things.

* * *

He can barely concentrate on his work the next morning. The only thing he can think about is his father standing behind the counter all those months by himself. Since his father will never tell him what the Polizzi brothers said or did to get money out of him, it gives Daniel permission to come up with all sorts of scenarios, each one worse than the last. He knows his father would never blame him, but he can’t help but feel responsible. Daniel had been so eager to escape the deli; had leapt at the opportunity to enlist and later to join the SSR, anything, _anything_ to get out of there.

The memory comes back to him unbidden—waking up in the hospital, his leg long gone, and seeing his father for the first time in years. He’d fallen asleep in the chair next to the bed. Daniel reached out and took his hand and his father stirred and sat up, blinking. _Pop_ , Daniel had choked, and that was all he could say…

“Coffee?”

Daniel looks up, startled, as Peggy sets the cup down on his desk. “Thanks,” he mumbles, taking a sip. “I needed this.”

“About last night…” she begins. “I’m sorry if I took you by surprise.”

“No, not at all. It was a good surprise.” He means it.

Peggy hesitates. “Daniel—” ( _Daniel_ , she called him again, not _Agent_ ) “I realize it’s a private matter, but if there is anything I can do to help you or your father…”

“I can handle it,” he bristles, before realizing that’s exactly what his father would say.

Peggy gives him a small smile, and that’s all it takes to change his mind. “I know that,” she says. “But having a little backup never hurts.”

* * *

“So, Mickey and Carlo Polizzi,” Peggy says as she takes a gigantic bite out of her hamburger. Pieces of lettuce and tomato fall out onto the table and she picks them up and eats them. The diner she picked to meet at after work isn’t impressive from the outside, but Daniel has to admit that the food is pretty decent.

He hasn’t had more than a few bites of his own burger, however. “Yeah. I went to high school with them.” They’d been bad news even back then, though they had never messed with him in particular. Mickey had always seemed to like him for whatever reason. “Unless things have really changed since I got back, they’re pretty low-level guys.”

“Should be easy, then.” She cracks her knuckles.

“Not quite,” he says. “Peggy, this is my neighborhood. I’m not an anonymous face; they know where I live. I don’t need word getting out that I’m a fed. The Polizzis might be small fry, but they still have connections.”

Peggy nods. “You’re worried about retaliation. Very reasonable. So we’ll have to think of a way to not implicate you or your father. Perhaps the Polizzis are involved in other activities besides extortion?”

“I don’t know the specifics, but probably the usual. Illegal gambling, theft, drugs…”

“Busy lads. Well, a few nights of surveillance should turn up something useful, I imagine.”

“You and me? Doing surveillance?” he asks. It’s a serious matter, of course, but he can’t help but feel a rush of excitement. He hasn’t done anything like this in over a year; he’d resigned himself to sitting behind a desk indefinitely.

“Why not? You and I are particularly suited to this line of work.”

“How do you figure?”

Peggy leans in. “Take Jack Thompson, for example. Not to say he doesn’t have his talents—”

“—or personal charm,” Daniel adds dryly.

“Or personal charm,” Peggy agrees with a grin, “But if I had never met the fellow and I saw him walking down the street, I would guess right away that he was an agent from the way he carries himself. He just looks the part, which is well and good for congressional hearings and scaring suspects in the interrogation room, but for anything that requires any finesse? Not so much. But you and I don’t _look_ the way people expect agents to look, and therein lies our advantage.”

Daniel nods thoughtfully. He hadn’t considered that angle, but it makes sense.

“On the other hand, you’ll be at a disadvantage because the Polizzis already know you, so it evens out,” she says. “Are you going to finish your chips?”

“Chips? Oh. I’m not that hungry. Go ahead,” he says, pushing his uneaten fries over to her. He watches with amusement as she gobbles them down.

It would feel like a date if they were different people, maybe. For a moment, he wonders what a date with Peggy Carter would look like, and then he snaps out of it. _She dated Captain America. Forget out of your league, Sousa, she’s out of your damn_ galaxy _._ (The voice in his head sounds a little like Thompson.)

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?”

Peggy shrugs. “Do you know what I’ve been doing over the past month since I started at the SSR? I’ve answered phones, brewed liters of coffee, filed reports, and fetched lunch for thirty agents. It’s very dull, Daniel, and it’s a waste of talent. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I suspect you’d rather like to be doing more as well.”

Daniel hasn’t been told to pick up the lunch order, but they’ve certainly stuck him with the most tedious tasks. He has to continually remind himself that what he’s doing is important, even if it doesn’t feel like it. But Peggy’s right—he wants more.

“All right. Let’s do it.”

A real smile spreads across her face. It’s very different from the polite smile she wears around the office. When he met her, Daniel thought she was pretty, but when she smiles like this—she’s stunning. His stomach does a somersault.

_Oh._

* * *

Several nights of surveillance prove somewhat unproductive, as Carlo and Mickey Polizzi appear to spend a considerable time in bars and little else. It does, however, give Daniel good reason to spend plenty of time with Peggy. He completely squanders it. He wants to know more about her, but any question he thinks of seems too personal and would open the door for her to ask him questions he’s not sure he would want to answer. So they talk about work and complain about their coworkers, and then there are long stretches of silence.

The break comes on the third night as they’re sitting in the car outside the Polizzi brothers’ favorite bar. Daniel’s on the verge of calling the whole thing off so he doesn’t waste any more of Peggy’s time, and that’s when she pulls a black wig and a pair of glasses out of her purse. “I’m going in,” she declares, settling the wig over her hair. She’s distractingly cute in glasses.

“Hold on, what are you doing?”

“I’m tired of waiting,” Peggy says. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

“Peggy, wait—” Daniel says, but she’s already shut the door. He slumps back in his seat and contemplates going after her, but the Polizzis would recognize him and all their effort would be for nothing.

He sits there and frets for about twenty minutes until Peggy emerges, coming around from the back of the building. She climbs into the back seat, tosses aside the wig and glasses, and starts rummaging through her purse. He stares as she pulls out a work shirt, a pair of pants, and short boots. (How many things can a woman fit in one purse anyway?)

“Eyes forward, if you please,” she says. He quickly averts his eyes, blushing like crazy. “Carlo Polizzi just exited the bar through a side door with a length of rope and a toolbox. He went down a manhole in the alley. Very suspicious, if you ask me. All right, you can turn around now.”

Daniel follows Peggy to the alley, where she kneels down and lifts off the manhole cover. She shines her flashlight down into the darkness and says, “I suppose there’s only one way to find out where he went.”

Daniel looks down the open manhole dubiously, eyeing the narrow ladder rungs. This wasn’t a scenario that had come up during physical therapy. He might be able to do it, but then again, he could also see this going terribly wrong. And he can’t let Peggy go down there alone. “I don’t know if this is a good idea, Peggy.”

“Nonsense. It’s an excellent idea. If you’d rather not climb down the ladder, I can go and you can keep watch up here. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to mess up your suit.”

“Wait, don’t—” he begins, but she’s already halfway down the manhole. He swears and carefully drops to his good knee, watching as her light disappears. _This is insane._

Ten very long minutes pass before Peggy pops up out of the manhole, grinning and filthy. Her hair is plastered to her forehead and she’s covered in mud up to her knees. “Alligators!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I found an alligator down there. A big one.” She starts laughing. “Sorry, I’m just joking. It was too good to pass up.”

He can’t stop himself from chuckling. “It’s a big sewer system. You never know. What did you really find?”

“Some sort of interesting system of pulleys and wooden pallets. It seems that our friends are using the sewers for smuggling terribly uncreative things, like large quantities of drugs and other illicit goods.”

“We could be getting in over our heads, Peggy,” Daniel says as they start walking back. “We don’t know how big of a network there is down there—oh, Christ.”

They nearly run smack into Thompson as he walks out of the bar next door. He’s clearly as surprised as they are, but he recovers quickly. “Well, well. Look who it is,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Sousa, you bastard! You move fast.”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Daniel says, flushing. “I’m not—we aren’t—”

Peggy grabs his elbow to shut him up. “Since I’m new to New York, I’m afraid I got rather mixed up on the subway. I happened to run into Daniel, who kindly offered to direct me back to the correct stop.”

It sounds ridiculous, and they all know it. Thompson looks Peggy up and down, taking in the mud and messy hair. “Whatever you’re doing, I want in.”

“No,” Peggy and Daniel say simultaneously.

“No? Okay,” Thompson shrugs. “Looks like I can collect my winnings tomorrow morning, then.”

“Fine, you’re in,” Daniel says quickly, spotting the frown on Peggy’s face. She doesn’t know that on her first day, the other agents all made bets on which one of them she would sleep with first. There’s no way he’s letting her find out about that. Or that Thompson had bet on him.

Thompson folds his arms and smirks as Daniel outlines the situation. He leaves out a few details like his father’s role and how Peggy got involved—there are certain things Thompson doesn’t need to know.

“Transporting drugs—or whatever—through the sewers? Seems like a lot of extra work,” Thompson says skeptically.

“Could be they’re trying to move the drugs through a rival gang’s territory undetected,” Daniel speculates. “Things have been tense lately.”

“It’s not that farfetched,” Peggy adds. “During the war, we used sewer systems on a few occasions to smuggle weapons and supplies.”

“Yeah, great story, but I’m gonna need some evidence. We’ll have to try to catch them when they move an actual shipment through.”

“Two nights from now. A couple hundred pounds of heroin. It’s unclear where they’ll be coming from, but this is the likely endpoint,” Peggy says. Daniel and Jack both look at her, and she shrugs. “I was at the bar with them, remember? They were speaking in some sort of code and thought they were being subtle. We’re not dealing with geniuses here. Oh, and I planted some bugs around the bar while I had the opportunity.”

“Let’s hope you understood them right,” Thompson says. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow at 2100. I want to see this system myself and get it mapped out before we call in the narcotics boys. Marge, you’re responsible for equipment. Radios, flashlights, compasses, rope, tools. Sousa, dig up whatever files we have on these Polizzi fellows and get some sewer maps. I don’t want to go in blind. Think you can handle that?”

Daniel has to bite his tongue, but he nods anyway. Of course Thompson would try to take over the investigation the moment he was included.

After Thompson’s gone, Peggy turns on Daniel. “What are you doing?”

“Thompson wasn’t buying your story; he would’ve found out one way or another,” Daniel says defensively. “And if we didn’t tell him…he would have told the entire office that you and I are, you know…” He’s glad it’s too dark for her to see him blush.

She doesn’t even attempt to hide her irritation. “Agent Sousa,” she begins, “Jack Thompson will talk regardless of anything you or I do. I already know what they say about me behind my back, and I don’t need you to protect my reputation or my feelings. Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agrees, thoroughly put in his place.

She hesitates. “I heard about the bet. I hope you didn’t participate, but if you did, I don’t want to know.”

“I didn’t.”

Peggy just looks at him, and once again, Daniel gets the feeling that he’s being assessed. He hopes she believes him. At last, she nods. “Well, then. We’d best go home and get some sleep. I expect that you and I have some busy nights ahead of us.”

* * *

They keep a ladder tucked away towards the back of the kitchen behind boxes of equipment. It’s not very tall, but it will work for Daniel’s purposes. While his father tends to the front of the store, Daniel pushes aside the boxes and sets up the ladder. The rungs are fairly wide and it’s not a vertical ascent, so it seems like a good place to start. It still takes several attempts to figure out the best way to climb and it requires a fair amount of upper body strength. He realizes he didn’t account for what to do with the crutch, so it hangs awkwardly off his arm and gets tangled in his feet as he climbs.

His father comes in just as Daniel makes it to the top. He crosses his arms. “You’re up to something.”

Daniel can’t even think of a reasonable excuse. “I’m just climbing a ladder.”

“I’m not talking about the ladder. I told you not to do anything stupid.”

Daniel doesn’t answer, and finally his father throws up his hands and heads back to the front, muttering something in Portuguese about how he must get it from his mother’s side of the family, those Italians…

Going down the ladder, Daniel discovers, is quite a bit harder than going up. He can’t see where he’s putting his feet and he nearly falls a couple times, but he starts to get the hang of it with a little more practice. When he can make it both up and down the ladder without slipping, he feels a rush of pride, and then feels slightly ridiculous. It’s just a ladder, after all.

But then he thinks about Peggy disappearing down the manhole into total darkness. At least this time, she won’t have to go alone.

* * *

They’re dressed and ready for action: Peggy’s assembled the equipment, Daniel’s got the maps, Thompson’s brought…Thompson. As Thompson lifts off the manhole cover, Daniel knows what’s coming and he’s prepared for it, but it grates on him anyway.

“Carter, with me,” Thompson says. “Sousa—keep watch up here. I’m not carrying you up and down ladders and I don’t have time to babysit.”

Daniel’s irritation boils over. This isn’t Thompson’s investigation, he’s not their boss, and he doesn’t get to decide what Daniel can or can’t do. “Did I ask you to carry me anywhere?”

Thompson raises his eyebrows. Before he can reply, Peggy says, “I’m sure _Agent_ Sousa knows his own capabilities better than you or I.”

That calms Daniel down a little. He has to admit that Thompson’s better suited for crawling around sewers than he is, but there’s no need for him to be an ass about it. “I’ll wait here,” he says, trying to keep the resentment out of his voice.

So once again, he watches as Peggy climbs down the manhole first, followed by Thompson. He paces a little bit and listens to snatches of their conversation over the radio.

“—need a man in your life to keep you occupied—”

“—perfectly occupied, thank you—”

“—hey, you know who in the office is single? S—shit!”

Peggy’s voice crackles to life. “We’re down to one radio,” she says. “Thompson sat on his. Forcefully.” Daniel stifles a laugh at Thompson swearing faintly in the background. Then he hears splashing and the unmistakable sound of gunshots, followed by the sound of Peggy panting as she runs.

“—bloody hell!” Peggy’s voice is drowned out by static.

“Carter! Do you copy?” he demands. “Peggy?” No answer.  

There’s no time to waste. Daniel tucks away his flashlight and radio and sits down carefully, legs dangling over the open manhole. He can’t see the bottom, but he knows it must go at least twenty feet down. Before he loses his nerve, he scoots over to the edge, finds the first rung with his left foot, and lowers himself inside. His crutch clacks against the walls as he takes the rungs one at a time. They’re much narrower and slicker than the ladder he practiced on, and he spends most of the way down drawing inventively on all the swearwords he picked up from his time in the army, with a few of his mother’s Italian curses thrown in for good measure.

He misses a step and ends up sliding down the last several feet to the bottom. Somehow he manages to land on his feet, but the pain in his right leg as he puts his full weight on the prosthesis is jarring. It takes him a minute to recover and regain his bearings.

He’s standing about ankle-deep in water, and for a moment he thinks about how that can’t be good for the prosthetic joints. Too late now. He fumbles for the flashlight and switches it on just in time to watch the biggest rat he’s ever seen go skittering by his feet. (Daniel’s a New Yorker, born and bred: there are rats, and then there are _rats_.)

Daniel switches the flashlight to his left hand so he can hold the gun in his right. He immediately takes note of the pulley system overhead that Peggy told him about. It looks crude, but it seems fairly sturdy. He starts walking slowly, straining his ears and eyes for Peggy and Thompson, though the only thing he can hear is his own breathing and the splashing he makes as he limps down the tunnel. The water is cold and his toes are already going numb.

The tunnel forks several hundred feet from the manhole. Daniel’s about to take the right fork, following the pulley system, but then he hears a loud thump echoing from the left fork. He pivots and heads that direction instead. After several minutes, he’s considering turning around. The height of the ceiling abruptly drops from six feet down to five, and as he ducks and takes a step forward with his left leg, he plunges almost hip deep into water. He staggers backward and loses his balance and lands on top of something lumpy, gasping as he twists his leg painfully.

It’s Thompson. Daniel rolls off of him and turns the other agent over onto his back. There’s blood trickling down his forehead. _Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead…_

Then Thompson groans and his eyes flutter open. “Sousa?”

Daniel breathes a sigh of relief. He flicks his flashlight up at the low ceiling and notes the blood smear where Thompson must have hit his head. Looking out across the water, he sees another partially submerged body lying further away—Mickey Polizzi. Daniel’s about to wade back in and retrieve him when his light falls on a third oddly textured lump in the water, just a few feet from Thompson’s outstretched legs.

He hears a deep, rumbling growl and sees the shining green eyes and without even thinking about it, he grabs Thompson by the collar and jerks him back hard just as the alligator lunges out of the water. It snaps at Thompson and misses his right foot by inches. Daniel steps forward and hits it in the snout with his crutch. The alligator drops back into the water and retreats as quickly as it appeared.

Daniel leans against the wall, shaking. Thompson’s still lying in the puddle of water with a shocked look on his face, fully conscious. “That wasn’t—oh my god—”

“A few inches to the left, and you and I could have been a matching pair,” Daniel says. “Where’s Carter? What happened?”

“They’re moving the drugs tonight, not tomorrow like we thought. We surprised each other. Carter and I split and I went after this guy and she went the other direction.” Thompson wipes at the blood on his forehead and winces, nodding over at Mickey. “He hit the ceiling full speed; don’t think he even saw it. I couldn’t stop in time.”

Daniel helps Thompson to his feet and together they drag the still-unconscious Mickey Polizzi out of the water, though not without trepidation. Thompson’s still a bit wobbly. “Stay here with our friend?” Daniel suggests as he tosses Thompson a pair of handcuffs. “He’s not waking up anytime soon. I can look for Carter.”

He’s prepared for Thompson to argue with him or make some unnecessary crack about chicks and gimps, but instead he just closes his eyes and nods. “Must’ve hit your head pretty hard too,” Daniel says, not entirely without sympathy. “Keep an eye out for gators; I’ll be back soon.”

“Sousa,” Thompson calls out as Daniel heads back the way he came. “Maybe we can leave this part out of the report.”

“Nothing for nothing, Jack,” Daniel answers.

Thompson makes a frustrated noise. “Fine. I owe you a drink. And I’ll never mention the bet again.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

He needn’t have worried about Peggy. Several hundred feet further down the tunnel, she’s got an unconscious Carlo Polizzi slumped over in handcuffs. Beside them are multiple crates stacked on top of a wooden pallet, attached to the pulley system.

Peggy has a very satisfied smile on her face. “What took you so long?”

“Minor delay. I found Thompson,” Daniel says. He pries open one of the crates and whistles. “This has to be tens of thousands worth of heroin. Time to call this one in.”

“Yes, very good, Agent Sousa.” She brushes a piece of hair out of her face and puts her hands on her hips.

“You look like the cat that got the cream,” Daniel observes.

She grins and Daniel’s heart beats faster. “I rather did, didn’t I?”

_Good god, this woman…_

* * *

Daniel’s body is already paying the price the next morning, but there’s far too much to do for him to take the day off. After a lengthy debriefing and even lengthier scolding from Dooley about calling for backup at the appropriate time and not playing cowboy, the chief dismisses Peggy and Daniel. “Not you, Thompson,” Dooley says. “Shut the door.”

Daniel makes his way slowly back to his desk and lowers himself into his chair with a grimace. “Look at that,” he tells Peggy. “Guess Thompson’s going to be getting another medal for this one. You and I can file the paperwork.”

She shrugs. “The narcotics bureau is having a field day with this. They suspect the underground drug smuggling network we discovered may be much more extensive than we thought. And the Polizzi brothers are already giving up names and information right and left. We did good work, Daniel, no matter who gets the credit.”

He knows she’s right. “At any rate, I have to thank you for helping me and my father out. It was a pleasure working with you,” he says.

“Likewise,” she says as she heads back to her desk. “We make an excellent team.”

There’s that brilliant smile again. Daniel is utterly, utterly lost.

* * *

Daniel has a late shift, so he doesn’t make it home until almost midnight. His father is sitting in the kitchen waiting for him, cup of coffee in hand. Daniel sets his crutch aside and takes a seat across from him.

“I heard they nabbed the Polizzi boys for drugs,” his father says. “Neighborhood was crawling with police all day.”

He seems to be in a contemplative mood, so Daniel doesn’t interrupt. His father looks down into his mug and continues, “I’ve been thinking about your mother lately. You know, when I met her, when I was just getting to know her—I admired her because she wasn’t scared of _nobody_. Not like me. She saw something wrong and she did her best to do what was right.

“But then I got to know her better, and I realized she was afraid too. She was afraid, and she did the right thing anyway. That’s when I knew I loved her.”

Daniel can’t find his voice. He looks across the table at the man who took him to see the Statue of Liberty when he was young, who pointed east to the Atlantic and said, _That’s where you come from, remember that_. This is the man who cried with him when his mother died. This is the man who said to him, reunited at the hospital at long last, _I’m here, Daniel; I’ve got you_.

His father stands up. “You’re her son, that’s for sure.”

“I’m yours too, Pop.”

Daniel sits there for a long time after his father goes to bed, sipping coffee and thinking. He pulls his chair up next to the window and looks out at his sleeping city, beautiful and vast and restless, and waits for sunrise.

 


End file.
